Fourth Grade 2011 NAEP TUDA Scores Show That Educational DEFormers Have Failed

I will let you see the NAEP’s own graphs regarding DC public school students in reading at the fourth grade level for 2011 and for the 9 years leading up to that.

Anybody looking at these graphs and charts can see quite clearly that 2009 and 2011 did not bring any of the miracles we were promised. As you know, Michelle Rhee, Kaya Henderson, and their dozen or so billionaire supporters claimed would happen if they were given control of DC public schools, and if we placed nearly half the students into charter schools, then miracles would occur: mastery rates would jump from 20% to 70% or even higher…

Here goes the first graph that shows a certain lack of miraculousness here in DCPS:

In NAEP’s own chart, you can see that DCPS is near the back of the pack of all of the large cities whose data was included in this survey. Only a few cities have larger percentages of “below-basic” students by 4th grade NAEP reading scores this year. (So much for “racing to the top”.)

Clearly, there was some progress since 2002. However, things actually got worse from 2009-2011 i.e. after two full years of the new IMPACT teacher evaluation system. And of course, IMPACT means ALL-TEST-PREP ALL-OF-THE-TIME. Fat lot of good that did.

In the graph shown above, you can see that DC is Number One in something – but it’s something bad. DC is first in having the biggest gap between the scores of white and hispanic fourth-graders in reading.

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What’s more, DC is also NUMBER ONE in having the largest gap between scores of white and black fourth graders in reading on the NAEP.

 

And DC is also #1 in having the largest gap between the poor and the non-poor in fourth grade NAEP reading scores, as you see above.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement for Rhee’s and Henderson’s Deforms.

The graphic right above here allows you to compare average 4th grade NAEP reading TUDA scores for all cities in the study. Here, as you can see, there are a few cities doing worse than DC. But DC is still well below the average for the nation or even for large cities.

(Was the miracle they were promising that other cities’ scores would go even further down that those in DC, so that DC wouldn’t always be last in everything?)

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In the previous graph, you can see that 4th grade NAEP reading scores seem to have been rising fairly steadily since 2o03, through 2009. From 2009 – 2011, those scores began falling somewhat. Not a sign of a miracle.

The previous graph shows how 4th graders in DCPS have been doing, by ethnic group since 2002, on the NAEP in reading. As you can see, the average scores in 2011 are all slightly lower than in 2009 OR in 2011. So much for an educational miracle.

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Here we see the NAEP average reading scores for all 4th grade DCPS students on the NAEP. Falling from a 203 to a 201 average score, while perhaps not statistically significant, is surely a sign that there was no educational miracle.

And, lastly,we have a graph of the gaps and scores between those students who are poor enough to qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, and those who are not as poor. As you can see, the gap between those two groups has gotten much wider. In 2007, it looks like the gap was about 28 points. In 2009, after 2 years of Rheedom, the gap had widned to 37 points. Now, in 2011, the gap is 46 points, more than in any other city.

Some miracle.